A Return to the Temple.....

On Friday evening, I'll be going to Shabbat services with a friend.

I asked him to take me.

I'm not Jewish but a long time ago I took a baby step towards inquiry....towards the consideration of conversion.

I was living in Seattle and working as an intensive care nurse. By the end of my first year there, I was raw and lost. The university hospital I worked at was a tough place....a referral hospital.....and either the best or the last chance for patients in our region.

I started work on an acute myelocytic leukemia ward. By choice or chance, our patients ranged in age from 19-26. At orientation, the nursing instructor noted the prognosis was 52 weeks with treatment. I remember leaning over to my mentor, the buddy nurse I would follow, and saying, "You mean they only have one year to live?" She shook her head, "In reality, its more like 26 weeks."

26 weeks. We didn't say 6 months....because 6 was such a small number. We talked in weeks....because it sounded like more time...even though it was not.

At first there were so many things to learn about chemo and cancer nursing....the patients seemed secondary. But once I learned the technicalities, the patients surfaced as people. They were like me.....we were in the dream stages of our lives........I want to travel, I want to find someone to love, I want to get married..... I want to .......except for some reason.....I was blessed with a shot of actually attaining my dreams and they...for some reason... would not.

It was sobering.....I would come home and curl up in a blanket...with a chill...you couldn't warm away.

Because of my smarts in a few months.....I got bumped into ICU ...and not just any intensive care unit.....but the Cardiac Surgery Unit....which meant you were hot shit.

The tough working conditions....the status.....was a lot of fun at first..... but like the leukemia ward, after a while...the pride in controlling 10 blinking beeping temperamental machines hooked up to your patient lost its luster....because, quite frankly, a lot of your patients died.

I went from lost dreams to regrets.

The patients were mostly men...... in their 40's and 50's.....they had houses, children, jobs......all kinds of stuff.....but now....at this point...with their hearts blown out or about to blow.........they regretted a simple missed kiss......arguments....lost friendships.....and in particular the times they hurt people and left the wounds unattended.

By the end of the year....I felt like someone had taken a knife and skinned me.

I had friends...close friends....I had a boyfriend....but I yearned and needed the feeling....the belief....that short lives....long lives....lives suddenly gone or regained.....had their place in the scheme of things.

I needed a BIG GOD....the one I grew up with ....my Catholic God...seemed more like Gulliver on the island of little people.....tied down with hundreds of strings created by a bureaucracy. Vestments.....confessionals...saints...holy cards....bargain your time between heaven and hell...sometimes it seemed more like a carnival than a relationship....and I wanted a relationship.

One of the surgical residents I worked was Jewish.....as we hovered over labile patients in the middle of the night...we talked....his God didn't have a face.....you couldn't put him on a holy card......he was the G-d of Justice and Mercy.....but I worried I had the wrong blood....a lack of a lineage and of course segments of Judaism could also be very rule bound.

I decided to read more. Went to the library. Made a decision to go to Shabbat service. I circled a Friday on my calender. I called the temple and asked them what time to show up. I called another temple and asked them what to wear to the first temple ( I didn't want to seem like an idiot to the temple I selected.) I wanted to slip in and observe....to be stealth....to see how people acted...and how it felt.

The closer it came to temple day. The more apprehensive I became.

I was worried the temple door would open....and a guard would ask....."What do you want here?"........and I'd have say..."I'm here to look over your G-d." Blonde...blue eyed....I was also afraid .....someone would ask...."Who's your family? What's your connection?" and I would have to admit ....I had none.

I parked my car at the end of the parking lot. I wore a plaid skirt and a white blouse. There was no body guard at the door. A man actually smiled at me when I came in. I slipped into a chair at the back against the wall. I was clueless. I had never been in a Temple before....I had no idea of what I was supposed to do but figured if I huddled in the back....I could fake it.

My heart settled down. Maybe this would be okay. And then, a family....a man...two boys and a woman....sat in my row. The woman sat a few seats away from me. I was thinking...damn...how come there's all these seats and this family has to sit in my row. I felt exposed now.

I decided to turn and smile at her. She stared back. To this day....I remember her .....black hair....Middle-eastern facial features.....high cheek bones.....no lipstick. Every time I looked at her she was looking at me. I started to squirm. Did I look out of place? Was I doing something wrong? Maybe non-Jews had to be accompanied by someone....maybe....I was supposed to do something...register? ....sit in a certain place?

I was so anxious....I needed a diversion....something to do. I reached for what seemed to be prayer book. I put it on my lap and tried to open it but of course it opened the opposite way and it was in Hebrew. Now her stare turned nasty. I was sure a neon sign..(in hot pink letters).....was right above my head....with an arrow pointing downwards.....and blinking...... NOT A JEW....

Every time I looked at her....... her eyes narrowed on me....they were slits by now. I don't remember the service....I couldn't pay attention. My cheeks were on fire.....I was sure I had done something wrong....committed some offense.

The service ended,.....the family left.....I exited.....complete with my neon sign above me.

I remember a short....hunched .....older man....with silver white hair and watery blue eyes near the doorway. I think he said hello....I think he extended his hand. Did he say something about cookies? .....But I flew past him.

I returned the books to the library.

With wisdom and time, I look back and say....why didn't I just call the temple and talk to someone. Why didn't I ask the surgical resident to go with me or hook me up with someone?

Maybe I was too concerned about lineage....but I had grown up in an ethnic neighborhood in Chicago where lineage was everything....your church...your bakery....your undertaker....all had to be from the same nationality. I chuckle because my friend who is taking me tonight...believes Jews are born not made ....so perhaps acceptance would have been an issue.

But no matter.....I return to a Temple tonight.....

not solo but with a friend......

I have no conversion plans.....

I'm going to make peace....and to settle my regrets....in my heart I have always known I should have shook that old man's hand and gone for cookies......
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The Museum of Hostages ...Remembering my Introduction to Evil.

This is a powerful picture for me. It scares me just like the cell scared me. The picture is taken in the Museum of Hostages. A small jail/cell block preserved next to a manor in an idyllic rolling hills-pasture-land-setting. The faculty wanted us to see this place.... a series of cells where the German gestapo crammed 20-30 people in the space equivalent to a large walk-in closet. From here Jews and non Jews were either shipped to concentration camps or simply taken outside and chained to the beautiful birch trees and shot.

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The place is grim. There is graffiti on the wall. A clock with hands pointing to 1pm. Names, prayers, quotes, pictures.....gougings. In each room, artifacts are placed on a small display: handcuffs, pictures....articles....helmets...bayonets....metal drinking cups.

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I went into cell #4 and froze. The display in this room had pictures from book about a concentration camp. I "recognized" the pictures.

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I grew up in Chicago and lived in a large apartment building. My grandparents owned the building and lived on the first floor. We had two apartments ...the 2ND floor and the basement and so my grandparents place was a passage between our dual living areas and like any kid a natural place to snoop.

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One day while snooping in their main closet I came across a book. It had a faded red cover and was in Polish. I opened it and immediately became frightened by what I saw. The book had pictures of skeleton-like people who were somehow still alive and standing. On other pages there were pictures of these skeleton people dead and heaped into piles. There were pages with pictures of faces, faces of women and men standing in line for something. I put the book back...but for the next couple of weeks....I would return and study the pictures. Each time the pictures got easier to look at....but each time I became more frightened at something I didn't understand.

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My grandfather caught me in the closet...sitting against the back wall ....studying...the book. He yanked it out of my hands and told me it was not a children's book. "Who are these people?" I asked him.

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"Jews."

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But that information didn't resonate with me. In my Catholic grammar school, Jews were folks who seemed to have...in children's terminology/ideology....missed the bus. As if everyone was standing around, the bus came....and a group of folks decided it was not the right bus and would wait for the next one. The Sisters seemed to be present Jews as stubborn folks......folks who had a chance at Jesus but preferred to wait for someone/something else they would like better. This inherently did not seem to me to be a big deal....yet it somehow was.

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I remember going back to the closet and this time when I studied the faces I felt a deep fear. The people all looked like they could be part of my family. Uncle Zigmund (all adult friends and relatives were called aunt or uncle) looked like the man at the beginning of the book. Aunt Clara looked like a woman in line. Did I look any different than some of the little girls?

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I guess it was my first experience with evil....of realizing that people would do harm...horrific harm ....for no logical reason....and if harm or death could be handed out based on no reason.......couldn't someone make up a rule that would eliminate me or my family based on something they didn't like? Perhaps all blonds would be considered evil or all people with a certain type of nose could be declared unworthy of living and destined for elimination.

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Seeing the familiar concentration camp pictures in the cell....transported me back to that early introduction to a particular madness....which could spread to others simply by being near it.

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I left the cell and walked outside onto the gravel path near the pasture.

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Bells were ringing....small tinkling bells.... I realized, after a few minutes, they were cow bells....innocent high-pitched bells ringing over the hillside....and it made me feel the fear again....how could madness come to such an inherently beautiful place?

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And if these valleys and green hills and distant snow -capped Alps and meadows and early spring flowers couldn't stop evil....what could?

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I didn't have an answer.

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